Busway Design Contest Hits Snag

Local Motion

Delays At Dot Cause Worry

June 03, 2002|By Stephanie Reitz

The calls have come from as far away as Europe and Mexico.

Designers, architects and artists from throughout North America are looking at Connecticut with interest, waiting for a chance to show what they'd do if selected to design the stations for the planned New Britain-Hartford busway.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the busway will be a buses-only road on existing railroad rights-of-way.

Commuters will be able to board it on stops from New Britain to Hartford, with each of the stations specially designed to offer amenities to travelers and the surrounding neighborhoods.

If all stays on schedule, the buses would start rolling in late 2005 or early 2006.

Design firms, architects and others will be invited to propose their ideas for the stations, and the five finalists' work will be shown to the public in a gallery show and catalog.

The contest's goal: to bring artistic flair to a major public works project, with the idea that the stations can be functional and maybe a little funky at the same time.

But there's a problem: Nobody knows when they'll have the chance to submit the design proposals, because the $160 million project is floating in the kind of bureaucratic morass that's so common to these huge endeavors.

Real Art Ways, which has been picked to administer the design contest, says it's been waiting since last year to get rolling -- but can't do it until the state Department of Transportation signs a contract with the project manager, which then frees up the $250,000 to run the contest.

Steven Holmes, director of visual arts and public programming for Real Art Ways, said he started receiving calls from companies immediately after the competition was announced in December.

``All the pieces are in place on our end, but we just need [DOT] to get it going from their point of view,'' Holmes said. ``We are concerned that we need to regain the momentum. The longer the delay goes on, the more concerned we get.''

They worry that more delays might dissuade good firms from applying for the design work if they've already committed themselves to another project elsewhere.

Also, some experts who agreed to help pick the winning company might run into other time commitments if the delay continues, according to Real Art Ways.

The DOT, on its end, says it's working as quickly and diligently as possible, considering the project's financial and environmental magnitude.

``It is a cumbersome and time-consuming process, but we're 99 percent sure we're going to have a contract signed by the end of June,'' said Michael Sanders, the DOT's transit and rideshare administrator.

The project includes a lot of environmental reviews, road planning, bridges and other details, Sanders said, which makes it far more involved than the average project.

A review of the busway's potential environmental impact took 24 months to complete, longer than the 12 to 18 months the DOT had projected at the start of the project.

``We're all on the same page here, but I think we're also all frustrated by the amount of time it's taken,'' Sanders said. ``I don't think we're going to lose the momentum, though.''

Stephanie Reitz writes about transportation issues and commuting. Suggestions may be sent by e-mail to Reitz@courant.com, or by mail to The Courant, 56 E. Main St., Avon, CT 06001. Her phone number is 860-284-7316.